When you work in a restaurant with enough backing and fancy enough clientele (or minimal backing and working-class clientele, but you’re the chef-owner with a shtick), menu flips make the tedious bits of the job worth it. After making the same dishes over and over again for months, sometimes beyond the season it even makes sense to keep selling them, doing a little spring cleaning on the menu feels positively invigorating.
This years dessert menu is already selling well, but the core theme of the selection isn’t just “seasonality”.Pick a menu from any restaurant- from the neighborhood diner to the latest Michelin-starred hotspot- and what goes into the menu is just as muchabout convenience, defensibility, economics, and business sense as any high-minded philosophy about sustainability, slow food, or “decolonizing the diet.” That’s because we don’t just sell food- we sell a night out. We sell a fantasy. We sell pleasure– so we make sure there’s something we can sell to as many people as possible.
Towards the end of my days in the winery, it gets to a point where I realize I’m taking up space more than helping out. The other two members of my team are there- one usually plugging away at whatever events are going out soon, and one getting their station ready to handle restaurant business for the night and getting up to speed- events, reservations for the night, VIPs and the like they’ll need to see coming.
A sign of good training and good people is when they leap into work on their own without the need for supervision- and the sign of a good manager is when they know their job is done for the time being. A leader’s job is to train, support, and provide for their team so that they can do their jobs well. That means providing materials, guidance, information, time, manpower, whatever is required. I believe the first and last question a leader of any group needs to ask is “How can I help you succeed?” Frequently, in my case, the answer to that question becomes “Go do something else and step aside. We’ve got it from here, we’ll call if there’s an issue.”
When you work in a restaurant, experiencing growth in your skills or knowledge is often a humbling but pretty neat experience.
Imagine for a minute you are a capable chef. You’ve been at it for awhile and a couple cooks reporting to you. You’re not in charge of the restaurant, but the executive chef trusts you to work their will and keep the team performing. You’ve got techniques in your hands and recipes/formulas you trust to get the job done.
One day, one of your cooks- younger or maybe just newer- looks at a method and recipe you just handed them and says, “Hey, why do we do it this way?”
In a moment, a wave of responses flash through your mind: “That’s my method. Who does this little shit think they are? Kids these days are so fucking lazy…that’s the way we’ve always done it…”
You might feel enraged, exasperated, or at the very least annoyed… but there’s something else behind it all. We don’t wanna look at it. We can’t always afford to honor or accept it, so we spend a lot of time pushing it down or numbing it.
Doubt.Doubt and Questions.
It can seriously suck to feel Doubt when you are so used to the meritocracy of the kitchen. Doubt is the mind killer. Doubt is the little death that brings total clusterfuckery. You can’t afford the time or space to doubt.
But, in a moment, you realize “I never asked that question… I just did as I was told.” You look at the cook and finally say “That’s the way we do it here… why? Do you know another way?”
Maybe that cook suggests a method you know (from your knowledge and experience) won’t get the result you need. “We roast the squash rather than steaming because we don’t want the added moisture in the recipe.” “We coddle the eggs so they won’t be so cold the butter seizes when we add them to the batter.”
Maybe they don’t and it’s an honest question. It seems like a wasted step. It seems redundant. In all your knowledge and experience, you can’t explain why that method is so important. “It’s the way we’ve always done it…” it made sense to someone some time ago and no one’s ever been bothered to check their work.
That’s where the growth happens. You either figure out the reason, or you figure out it HAS no reason and it’s a waste. In a meritocracy, you are judged by what you accomplish and are capable of- not what you were, who you know, or how long something as been done your way.
By choosing Curiosity and Humility over Hubris, the answer is found. Dispassionate and clear as a failed sauce or a botched bake. It’s either “this is why’ or “this is a waste.”
Curiosity weaponizes Doubt against itself.Curiosity is powered by Humility. We can’t know everything, or everyone’s experiences.
For me, Curiosity and Humilty are crucial to leading well. If my staff are watching me and hoping to see their future in the field, I need to show them that asking questions and having doubts are good.
They need to see that even the pastry chef, with knowledge and experience, still has a lot to learn and can even learn from them. It’s been a tenet of mine for a long time that if one of my apprentices comes up with a new way to do something that renders a better product, does a job more efficiently, or both, that’s how we do itnow.My ego takes a backseat, and if it turns out there’s a problem with that new method, we all learn why.
Imagine what you will learn when you admit you don’t know everything.
No one likes wasting their time, or feeling like their time is being wasted. If you can’t explain the impact of a task, why does the task need to be done by anyone?
I’ve been silent on here for the last few weeks. Between a very compressed event schedule at the winery, Yom Kippur, and the anniversary of October 7th, I haven’t had the energy or the will to do much at all. With the arrival of a slow period, though, I finally have time to rest, think clearly, and put something on this blog worth reading.
I also have time to take on some of the more… “long-form” projects that come through the kitchen. One of these was a process I’ve come to call “Quinceageddon.” It began last year when my chef bought about 40 lbs of locally-grown quince, dropped it in our walk-in fridge, and told me to do something with it.
For those who don’t know, a quince is thetsundere version of a pear. Historically called the “fragrant pear,” a quince looks like a giant lumpy pear that has a positively wonderful fragrance- floral, sweet, and sharp all at the same time- but is utterly inedible by itself. The fruit is so rich in pectin and tannin that it’s like biting into a rock-hard raw potato, but painfully bitter in addition to being actually painful.
The single most popular- and arguably the best- thing to do with quince is to make quince paste, or membrillo. The striking red color and tart/sweet flavor makes it a staple pastry filling in Latin America and Spain, as well as a classy addition to cheese boards. Membrillo can be bought from specialty stores, but it tends to be expensive because making it takes hours of work. First comes peeling, coring, and chopping the rock hard fruit. Then braising the fruit with water and citrus to soften it. Then milling, blending, mixing and cooking it slowly for hours until the puree turns crimson red, and finally blending and cooling… but if you (or the pastry chef you hired) have a bit of a blank day to spend, it’s easy enough to make it yourself.
*Frenchy SpongeBob Voice* “8 Hours Later…”
The other project I found myself working on this week was seeing to the end of our tomato supply. All summer, we had an excellent supply of local tomatoes that we worked into sauces, salads, jams, platters, platings, and the like. With autumn in full swing and tomatoes leaving the markets, it was time to similarly see them off our menu.
That meant we had about 20 pounds of beautiful (if somewhat wrinkly) multicolored cherry tomatoes that would soon be attracting more fruit flies than customers if we didn’t deal with them soon, turning them into jam that could be reliably frozen for a future time… which meant they were handed over to me and my team.
Slowly, individually plucking the green stems and leaves off the tomatoes as I dropped them into a bucket on a scale, I realized, would probably make a cook fresh out of school (or a younger me, for that matter) go mad and question their life choices… if I just told them to do it.
While I was plucking through these tomatoes, my assistant Marisah was taking another crack at piping the gouger cheese puffs we use for events. As I plucked stems, I called back advice over my shoulder as she mixed the sticky pate au choux batter until I realized what I was doing and said “Augh, sorry… you’ve literally made this before, I’m preaching to the choir here.” To which Marisah graciously laughed and said “It’s alright, I enjoy the teaching.”
That’s when I looked back down at my tomatoes and realized a mistake that too many chef make and that I do my very best not to make- they don’t give the context for a task.
For too many “old school” chefs and cooks, when you are given an instruction, the correct answer is “Yes, chef” and then you do it. Maybe the almighty Chef will give you a reason or some instruction, but the key in that task is obedience. When the boss says “jump,” you ask “how high” on the way down. That was what made a good cook. “Kids these days with their questions and their ideas and their entitlement…”
Karen fixed that for me relatively quickly in my career over a batch of pastry cream.
“Your custard always gels too hard, Matt. What are you… wait, are you done mixing it already?” “Um, yeah Karen- that’s what I was taught, mix it until the butter melts…” “Matt, if you just put the butter in there, it’ll melt and then you’ll have brick. You move it until the butter melts and it’s cool. If you want a custard pie filling, that’s fine, but if you want it smooth and pipeable, you need to mix it longer.” “Always ask questions, Matt.”
If I told Marisah or anyone else “peel and chop 40 pounds of quince” or “individually pull the green bits off 16 pounds of cherry tomatoes” without any other information, or if I answered questions with “because I said so,”why wouldn’t I expect shitty results? That’s stupid, capricious, annoying, and a massive waste of goddamned time.
If, on the other hand, I was honest and said “Peel, core and chop these quince. We’re making a shit-ton of quince paste for the year, and peels and seeds will make the milling more difficult” and “We’re throwing all these into jam and we don’t want the green bits,” suddenly there’s a reason to do a good job of it beyond “I have authority and you don’t.”
What’s more, being open to questions can help, change, or eliminate the task altogether. I think of it as “keeping me honest’ in the face of culinary orthodoxy, because if someone else says “why can’t we just food mill or process the tomatoes as they are” suddenly I, as a teacher and leader, have to think the task through.
In the case of the tomatoes, I need to be able to say “The food processor will chop up the green bits, and we don’t want them at all. The food mill will strain out the seeds which we do want.” The same logic applies for why we don’t process the parsley.
Occasionally, however, it gives me pause to say “Hey, why DON’T we do the task that way?” If I can’t find a reason, we experiment. If it works, voila- a useless task as been eliminated because I was able to say “Huh… let’s try it!” Instead of getting butt-hurt over my orders being questioned, an apprentice feels validated, labor has been reduced, and efficiency increased.
Put your ego aside, get your head out of your ass, and invest the tiny amount of time it takes to feed your employees curiosity. Create enjoyable teaching moments, and reap the benefits of ideas beyond your own.
Like so many culinarians, I found belonging and sanctuary in the kitchen.
I am just one of a community of artists, craftsmen, lunatics, madmen, and misfits who Found My Tribe. We are passionate, angry, opinionated, and utterly devoted to Food and Dining in and of themselves arguably beyond notions of “customer service.” Serving Customers, though important, is debatably an (important) afterthought compared to the effectiveness and quality with which we just Make Things For People To Eat.
Our belonging is anchored by shared experiences, shared knowledge, shared idiosyncrasies and lingo, and our personal capacity and skill sets. In absence of anything else, I belong in any kitchen I am in because my knowledge, experience, skills, and ability to carry hard give me the right to belong.
“Sanctuary,” on the other hand, is different for everyone. In general, most of the cooks I know (myself included) are terminal workaholics who fall in and out of rehab constantly. We know we shouldn’t work as many hours as we do as hard as we do. We grouse and complain about hoping to get sent home early, but we’ll be first to insist that “as soon as we look away, everything goes to hell.”
The truth is that the kitchen for many of us is not just “work”- even though we’re more than happy to get paid for our labor. The kitchen is where Everything Has A Reason and Everything Make Sense, including and especially us. It’s a space where order is established and it’s an order we know and understand well. No one has to tell us what we’re there for or what our function is after a while. We can lose ourselves in the dance of a busy service, julienne celery, or rolling seemingly endless loaves of bread. We see and feel our meaning for that day in our hands.
The Black Hat Baker 